Having a huge battery under the floor of an electric vehicle not only enables long-distance driving on a single charge, but it can also do what batteries do best: power stuff. But in order to do that, an EV has to be fitted with the right parts to enable owners to export power from the high-voltage packs.
Thankfully, some automakers have seen the light at the end of the tunnel and are building EVs with something called vehicle-to-home (V2H) functionality, which allows them to act like stationary batteries when they’re parked at home.
This is similar to vehicle-to-load (V2L), but the main differences are that V2H can output more power and it needs extra equipment to power an entire house via the car’s charging port. This means a whole home can survive a multiple-day outage if the battery is full, but it also means that owners will have to shell out thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars to set up everything.
While many EVs are equipped with V2L capabilities, the following ones are explicitly designed to power a whole home using automaker-supplied equipment.
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That said, seeing how the price of a single Tesla Powerwall 3 installation can easily go over $10,000, setting up a house to work with your car’s battery doesn’t seem like such a hassle anymore. The Powerwall 3 has 13.5 kilowatt-hours of energy, while all the cars on this list have over 50 kWh of battery capacity, meaning they will keep the lights on for much longer.
So, with all this being said, let’s take a look at all the EVs in the United States that have vehicle-to-home (V2H) capabilities.
Nissan Leaf (Second Generation)
The CHAdeMO charging port on the aging second-gen Nissan Leaf might be on its way out, but it was designed from the get-go to allow the export of power from the high-voltage battery. That’s very good.
What’s less than ideal is that the only approved bidirectional charger for the Leaf comes from Fermata Energy. It’s called the FE-20, and it’s only available for businesses that have a three-phase grid connection.
Photo by: Wallbox
Kia EV9
Hyundai Motor Group’s spacious three-row electric SUV can provide power to your house when used with Wallbox’s Quasar 2 bidirectional charger and the associated Power Recovery Unit (PRU).
That said, deliveries of the Quasar 2 are not yet up to scale, with Wallbox’s website claiming the company is preparing the next wave of deliveries. It can charge the car at up to 12 kW, while the discharge power is capped at 12.8 kW on a split-phase system.
Ford F-150 Lightning
When paired with the Ford Intelligent Backup Power bundle, F-150 Lightning owners can send up to 9.6 kW of power from their truck’s high-voltage battery to their house to keep everything running in an outage. The Charge Station Pro home charger is also needed, as well as a home integration kit from partner Sunrun, which includes an inverter, a transfer switch, and a small battery to initiate the system when the power goes out.
Tesla Cybertruck
The Cybertruck is the only Tesla EV to support V2H. To power an entire house with the Cybertruck’s high-voltage battery, owners need to install a Universal Wall Connector charger, a Powershare Gateway and a Tesla Backup Switch. If you happen to have a Tesla Powerwall energy storage solution installed, no additional hardware is needed for home backup.
General Motors
GM put in a genuine effort to make most of its Ultium-based EVs compatible with V2H. Besides spec’ing a dozen cars with the necessary parts to export power from their high-voltage batteries, the American auto giant has also come up with all the bits and pieces that need to be installed in your house.
Photo by: General Motors
- 2024 and 2025 Chevrolet Silverado EV WT and RST
- 2024 and 2025 Chevrolet Blazer EV
- 2024 and 2025 Chevrolet Equinox EV
- 2025 and 2025 GMC Sierra EV Denal
- 2025 and 2025 Cadillac Lyriq
- 2025 Cadillac Escalade IQ
- 2025 Cadillac Optiq
- 2026 Cadillac Vistiq
Some 2024 models might require a software update to enable V2H functionality, which can be done either at the dealer or over-the-air. Interestingly, the GMC Hummer EV, one of the first Ultium-based EVs, does not seem to have V2H capability as of this writing.
To use vehicle-to-home on any of the compatible GM EVs, owners must install the GM Energy V2H Bundle, which comes with a bidirectional charger and an Enablement Kit that’s rated at 200 amps. Optionally, you can add a storage battery to the mix.
In theory, other cars on the market, like the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, are also capable of delivering power from their high-voltage batteries to a house’s electrical panel, but the feature is not officially supported stateside. Some trials in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and some European countries have shown that it’s possible, but the right auxiliary equipment needs to be supplied, which is just not the case in the U.S.
Emporia is apparently working on a vehicle-to-everything (V2X) bidirectional charger, which would enable V2H for compatible cars, but news is slim on that front. Enphase also announced it was working on a bidirectional charger, but it never came to fruition.